A second company has come forward to announce they are no longer doing a Steam Machine, and this time it's Falcon Northwest.
I was hesitant to write about it after hearing about it in our IRC, but with lots of other sites picking it up and noting the weirdness I noticed I decided to cover it.
Venture Beat are the ones to originally cover it.
They aren't saying they will never do one, but right now SteamOS has issues for them:
What annoys me about their article is this section they wrote:
Nothing is more annoying than things like we have heard, as it usually means it's a load of rubbish they wrote themselves. There's nothing more annoying than secret sources of information for something that doesn't need to be a secret like this, especially since SteamOS is an open platform anyone can go and check it.
I have personally installed SteamOS myself, and if you weren't able to have more than one hard drive it wouldn't ask you where you want your boot-loader installed, it would just do it for you. With that said, I can't verify it myself as my Steam Machine is only setup with the single spare drive I had. If any one else in the comments would like to verify it, please do as it sounds very odd to me. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I was hesitant to write about it after hearing about it in our IRC, but with lots of other sites picking it up and noting the weirdness I noticed I decided to cover it.
Venture Beat are the ones to originally cover it.
They aren't saying they will never do one, but right now SteamOS has issues for them:
Quote“We met with Valve about our reservations concerning the limitations of SteamOS with high-end PC builds, and they agreed they were not issues that could be overcome in time for us to launch a Steam Machine this year,” said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest in Medford, Oregon. “But they were genuinely interested in working to address them in future SteamOS builds. So the option for us to produce a Steam Machine is still open, and our Tiki PCs have been in production for years as Windows systems and are always ready. But for now, we’ve put our plans to offer a Steam Machine on hold.”
What annoys me about their article is this section they wrote:
QuoteReeves declined to go into specific reasons why. But we have heard that there are some technical challenges with the SteamOS, which is targeted at simpler machines where the number of options for expansion are limited. Right now, for instance, you can only use one graphics card with the SteamOS. And users also can’t use more than one hard disk drive in a system with the SteamOS. Valve is said to be working on adding support for more options, but that isn’t happening fast enough.
Nothing is more annoying than things like we have heard, as it usually means it's a load of rubbish they wrote themselves. There's nothing more annoying than secret sources of information for something that doesn't need to be a secret like this, especially since SteamOS is an open platform anyone can go and check it.
I have personally installed SteamOS myself, and if you weren't able to have more than one hard drive it wouldn't ask you where you want your boot-loader installed, it would just do it for you. With that said, I can't verify it myself as my Steam Machine is only setup with the single spare drive I had. If any one else in the comments would like to verify it, please do as it sounds very odd to me. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: AnxiousInfusionYour striked-out text pretty much summarizes it. On consoles you just buy a game, put it in the device and play. No further thinking required, which I count as a bonus after a day at work. No thinking if a game is available for that OS (you wouldn't own it otherwise), or how to optimize graphics settings for a good FPS vs quality. Upgrades are trivial too, as the only upgrade path is buying a newly released console.The console experience is only "far superior to what PC can offer" if the user cannot or does not want to think for himself. Unless you're saying that Valve need to target people who cannot think independently, in which case I guess I agree as SteamOS is meant to strip away the "hard" things about PC gaming.
EDIT: Let me reword this to be less combative. What console-only aspects of the gaming experience does SteamOS not yet have, that you feel it should?
Add to this, that Steam machines will never give the same price/performance as consoles up front, as the latter are subsidized by game sales and can have games much more optimized due to entirely uniform hardware, than what is possible for PCs.
Until these things are fixed -- though I can't imagine how the subsidizing part can be fixed -- most PC gamers seem better off using Windows and console gamers using consoles. For the time being their effort will mostly help Linux users who want to have a better choice of games, and for Windows users by creating pressure for Microsoft to be careful about the things they try with Windows, but I can't imagine many people switching anytime soon.
It is good to know the alternatives though, in case that Microsoft uses the continous-upgrade style of Windows 10 (i.e. can't protest by sitting out a bad-reputation upgrade like Vasta or 8) to push unpopular changes.
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Quoting: AnxiousInfusionEDIT: Let me reword this to be less combative. What console-only aspects of the gaming experience does SteamOS not yet have, that you feel it should?
Games. No, seriously. Games.
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Quoting: AnxiousInfusionOpenGL was never envisioned to be used as a high end gaming solution in 2015.You people really need to get over this myth. That's exactly what Valve and the graphics chip manufacturers were going for with the recent extensions and the AZDO stuff. Until they started working on Vulkan, that is. But OpenGL 4 is already pretty much equivalent to D3D11 in features and performance (depending on drivers of course), although there are not many with the expertise to make efficient use of it. Don't know if there ever will, not that the effort is behind Vulkan. Though make no mistake, I'm not complaining. Vulkan is the future.
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Quoting: Yu0On consoles you just buy a game, put it in the device and play. No further thinking required, which I count as a bonus after a day at work. No thinking if a game is available for that OS (you wouldn't own it otherwise), or how to optimize graphics settings for a good FPS vs quality. Upgrades are trivial too, as the only upgrade path is buying a newly released console.
Add to this, that Steam machines will never give the same price/performance as consoles up front, as the latter are subsidized by game sales and can have games much more optimized due to entirely uniform hardware, than what is possible for PCs.
This is the core of console advantages that the PC gamers must comprehend for at all to be qualified to enter any discussion about consoles. Without this understanding one is not equipped to even have a valid opinion.
It's about user experience, not an "ability to think". That is nothing else than an elitist excuse for ones own struggles with settings, drivers, hardware, tweaks and hassle.
The vast majority who are eligible to purchase a Steam Machine, purchase this machine not to get a PC to tinker with, but a console to use like how they use their blu-ray players, TVs and stereo equipment. They don't purchase TV sets that just works "because they are unable to think", but because of the user experience. They want a box that works. Period. Else, they'll go buy a PC instead and get themselves a quite expensive and time consuming hobby instead.
And if they are sadists, they install Linux on that box. ;)
Last edited by Beamboom on 17 November 2015 at 11:59 am UTC
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Quoting: BeamboomAnd if they are sadists, they install Linux on that box. ;)You mean "masochists" I assume, although I don't agree. Linux is bliss after the self-punishment that is Windows. ;)
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Quoting: KimyrielleWindows 1.0 was garbage too, btw. ;)
you put a full stop in there ?
Last edited by on 17 November 2015 at 1:01 pm UTC
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Mountain Man Nov 17, 2015
QuoteNothing is more annoying than things like "we have heard", as it usually means it's a load of rubbish they wrote themselves.Or it means they saw some uncomfirmed rumors on a message board somewhere. So technically they did "hear" it, but it's still a load of rubbish.
Speaking of other unconfirmed rumors, I really hope it's true that Valve is playing a long-game here and that we're not witnessing the beginning of the end of the grand SteamOS/Linux experiment.
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Mountain Man Nov 17, 2015
Quoting: KimyrielleI guess they are going through a long process of fine tuning and gradual improvement, like any other Linux distro ever released. At least I have never seen one where the 1.0 was any good. Windows 1.0 was garbage too, btw. ;)And Windows 2.0, and 3.0, and 3.1, and 95, and 98, and ME, and XP, and Vista...
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Quoting: AnxiousInfusionEDIT: Let me reword this to be less combative. What console-only aspects of the gaming experience does SteamOS not yet have, that you feel it should?SteamOS is very buggy right now, there is a lot of not important but annoying bugs and still a big list of things that need to be polished to make it an enjoyable experience. But I know Valve is actively fixing this, and it should get better soon.
Last edited by Nyamiou on 17 November 2015 at 6:52 pm UTC
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With regards to
I have an nVidia 980 GTX; would have wanted to buy a second for SLI and switch over to UltraHD resolutions.
Well, on Linux SLI is a joke, hence is true that you can't have more than one videocard really.
It's sad but true.
Ps. I don't use windows, I've been using Ubuntu since 2007 and I buy Linux only games on my Linux PC (apart SC II).
QuoteRight now, for instance, you can only use one graphics card with the SteamOSI'm afraid is true.
I have an nVidia 980 GTX; would have wanted to buy a second for SLI and switch over to UltraHD resolutions.
Well, on Linux SLI is a joke, hence is true that you can't have more than one videocard really.
It's sad but true.
Ps. I don't use windows, I've been using Ubuntu since 2007 and I buy Linux only games on my Linux PC (apart SC II).
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